Sign In
0 Items (
Search
Comments (42)
Three Weekend Australian newspaper articles and two (December Issue) Quadrant articles got my attention after a planned outing was deferred and I had time on my hands. The articles, in order, by Gemma Tognini, Greg Craven, Greg Sheridan, Rachael Kohn and Daryl McCann were, and are, well worth reading. This isn’t a review. But, briefly, all turn on the horrific slaughter which occurred in southern Israel on October 7.
Tognini laments the sentiments expressed in the streets and on the Left; Craven, the parsing of evil; Sheridan, the incursion into the West of anti-Semitism via immigration from the Middle East and North Africa; Kohn, the subservient position of women in Islam; and McCann, the attitude of Arab states to Israel’s existence. Obviously, there is much more to each article. I’ve taken a liberty, for a purpose. That purpose is to use plain words to identify the underlying problem and the solution. More liberties to come I’m afraid.
All of the authors get close to identifying the problem and the solution without reaching a definitive denouement, at least so far as I’m concerned.
Tognini comments on “how far we have fallen” since Doc Evatt in 1947 “guided the UN vote” to establish the state of Israel. You don’t have to go back that far. I arrived in Australia in 1965. How far have we fallen since then; since later than then? And why, principally, when it comes to anti-Semitism? No prizes for guessing.
Craven manages to avoid mentioning Islam. Like Basil Fawlty not mentioning the war. The anti-Semitic Left and right get mentioned, and Hamas as the embodiment of evil. To wit, “in the dirty bomb assault against Western values, there is no Israel only a greater us. As far as Hamas and its allies are concerned, we all wear kippahs now.” Maybe, but if we’ve only got Hamas, Hizballah and the Houthis and other like groups to deal with we don’t have serious problem. But we do have a serious problem.
Sheridan gets much more down and dirty and thus closer to the truth. But true to form, having identified the curse of Muslim immigration and referenced three books on the subject by Andrew Hussey (The French Intifada), Chrispher Caldwell (Reflections on the Revolution in Europe) and Douglas Murray (The Strange Death of Europe), he proceeds to write: “Nobody wants a religiosity or ethnically discriminatory immigration program.” Sorry, yes they do; lots of hands shoot up, including mine. I’ve also read other scary books on the matter by Oriana Fallaci, Mark Steyn and Robert Spencer, among others. Perhaps they have coloured my concerns and made me more careful about who is invited into my country.
Kohn writes:
Assimilation to Australian values and norms of egalitarianism and freedom of conscience is therefore not going to happen smoothly and easily for Muslim Australians as long as they are beholden to the imams and sheiks who hold forth in the mosque and prayer hall, and appear opposed to contemporary interpretations of the Koran…
I am a literalist by inclination. All else, ‘contemporary interpretations’ and the like, are simply subjective imaginings. Imams are literalists too. The Koran, the very words of Allah are immutable, as are the sayings and doings of Muhammed (in the Hadith). Assimilation to Australian values is a dream. Not only is such assimilation not going to happen easily, it’s not going to happen at all.
Like Sheridan, McCann gets close to the truth. Some great stuff on the ‘victim versus the oppressor’ narrative which plagues much of the commentariat’s misguided analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, he refers to “Islamic revivalism,” dating back to the eighteenth century. What I don’t like about this way of putting things is that it might suggest that a more benign Islam once existed and might, possibly, exist again. I am drawing this inference, and concede McCann might not have meant it at all. But for me it’s a platform to make the point that there is no reason to believe Islam will ever reform; whatever that means. Some commentators have held out hope, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Heretic: Why Islam needs a reformation now) and Zuhdi Jasser (see my “Reformist Pipedreams, Islamic Reality, Muslim Accountability,” Quadrant, December 2017). Hope springs eternal.
Time to put up. I think Islam is incompatible with Western civilisation. I think Islamists and knowledgeable Muslims know this. On the other hand, even leaving aside those comprising the deluded political and media Left, we traditional Westerners don’t know it; or most of us don’t. Many of us cling to some baseless Micawberish hope that fourteen centuries of conquest, and belief in Muslim superiority over all others, is a passing phase. It won’t pass. And 1.8 billion philoprogenitive Muslims will increase in number not die out.
Containment is the only feasible strategy. Part of that is to severely restrict, if not ban, Muslim immigration to the West. And to ensure so far as is feasible that no taxpayer support is provided to any institution, Islamic schools in particular, which teach or preach values inimical to Western values. Part is unequivocally to support Israel, the country in the front line of defending Western civilisation. Part is rediscovering national self-belief and ridding schools of the influence of teachers and curriculums which undermines healthy patriotism. This is a battle which must be won. The wider war will not be won; it just must not be lost.
On one side is Judeo-Christian civilisation, fashioned through faith in the one true God whose son Jesus Christ set enlightened new ground rules for treating each other decently. And it has borne much fruit. On the other is Islam, of which, as Churchill put it, “no stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”
I commented on Tognini’s opening question:
***********
GT: Australia, who have we become?
LBL: A nation of the wrong immigrants.
**********
Rejected as expected
*********
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=b16a7fa1-fea2-4382-8912-0cf9dd173e25
Craven:
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=bc6eaaf4-6ec6-4fe0-ba28-f64781148e79
Sheridan:
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=c66866e0-9f27-403d-a3de-877b05744f30
I commented on Tognini’s opening question:
Australia, who have we become?
LBL: A nation of the wrong immigrants.
Rejected. Quelle surprise!
So what will we do?
I honestly dont know which is more frightening, Islam itself or those who refuse to acknowledge the true nature of Islam.
I’m happy to report my own limited experience which is that the Australian-born daughters of conservative Muslim immigrants that I have known are virtually irreligious if not hostile to the faith.
Australian society gives them a choice between the traditional role that their fathers expect them to perform, and in the alternative, living as free women in a free society (they learn about this alternative through school and university). The ones I have known have universally chosen the latter, in some cases being disowned for that decision. I think the empowerment of women (something our country does pretty well) in the Muslim community may be a large part of the solution to this particular problem.
I’ve also encountered the same, but that’s a limited cohort – only those I have personally encountered, and not in their homes or among their communal gatherings. The vehemence at the celebratory gatherings since the slaughter of Israelis demonstrates my personal experience isn’t comprehensive.
I 100% agree. Deep down, everybody knows the truth about Islam But being truthful is a rare commodity in these strange times we live in.
An excellent analysis Peter showing deep awareness of what Churchill and others of earlier times called Mohammedanism.
Those opposed to immigration by these followers of the prophet can be encouraged by the strength and recent electoral success of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Wilders published in 2012 his manifesto ‘Marked for Death – Islam’s War Against the West and Me’ and since then his rise to major party status has in the most recent months surged ahead.
In Australia we are fortunate to have the Anglican scholar Mark Durie who has analysed the movement and its brutal Caliphates. Andrew Bolt has had Mark Durie on the Bolt Report and most recently after the Dutch Election.
I agree with your assessment Peter and control measures ; how to pull Islams teeth, without obliterating the lot of’em is the great conundrum.
The English Philosopher Roger Scruton once wrote somewhere that there was a way and it consisted of actually changing the responsibility to God that every single Muslim signs up to, in the same way every Christian does when we recite The Lords Prayer.
In their equivalent there is absolutely no requirement for a Muslim to show any forgiveness for anybody, this is all left to the mercy and compassion of God, whereas in our Lords Prayer there is a very specific requirement and responsibility on the individual when we repeat “…… forgive us our trespassers as we forgive those who trespass against us……”.
If that was put into their Exordium or Lords Prayer it would change the official internal thinking of ever single Muslim in the world….and that’s obviously what seems to be required…….. as it stands at present ?
Spelling correction ; ‘trespasses’, not ‘trespassers’.
Hmm, Peter Marriott, I must point out that the Hebrew Bible does not hold to the principle of
“…… forgive us our trespassers as we forgive those who trespass against us……”
And of course, the rejection of Christ’s teaching was so profound among Jews that they howled for the Crucifixion of Jesus! That, is according to the Christian Bible. Judaism has more in common with Islam than Christianity, as the “…eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth…” of the Torah demonstrates. It is mistaken to conflate Christianity with Judaism and see them both as some kind of “dynamic duo” at the frontline defending Western Civilisation. The great leader of the Protestant Christian Reformation, Martin Luther, even wrote a book condemning Jews, “On the Jews and Their Lies”. How times have changed!
Whilst Christianity seems to have been originally a sect of Judaism it probably stood much as Jehovah’s Witnesses stand to mainstream Christianity today, albeit with even more radical doctrinal differences. Of course the religion which emerged after the Council of Nicea was as vastly different from the 1st C. as the rainbow gospel progressive churches are from their early 19th C. forebears. Christians generally had no truck with Jews unless they were baptised and sincerely converted but from the 18th C. unconverted Jews have been allowed to take an increasing role in our civilization. Has that role been so great that the appellation Judaeo-Christian is now justified? Quite possibly and with increasing cause since the early nineteenth century. Perhaps the crossover point was a couple of decades ago, when the terms ‘anno domini’ and ‘before Christ’ were definitively discarded in favour of the long-preferred Jewish workarounds ‘CE’ and ‘BCE’. Given the trajectory of the churches, relying as they largely do on supernatural belief rather than identity, one wonders for how much longer the suffix in Judaeo-Christian will be warranted.
“Christians generally had no truck with Jews unless they were baptised and sincerely converted”
“No truck with Jews”. Gosh, that’s a euphemism straight out of your last volkssturm meeting. What you mean by “no truck with Jews” is inquisitions, pogroms, mass-expulsions, and civil exclusion. Those were the days.
But racial suicide began when “from the 18th C. unconverted Jews have been allowed to take an increasing role in our civilisation” Er, whose civilisation? Why wasn’t it theirs also? Jew-baiters like Horst can never quite answer that question.
And those scheming Jews have engineered the abandonment of the terms BC and AD! This is the “crossover point” for the jewish takeover. Our society will soon be “judeo”, rather than judeo-christian”!
Mad, bad but, thankfully, laughable rather than dangerous.
To be fair, we’re in furious agreement about the trajectory of the churches.
We seem to agree about a lot. It’s all a question of emphasis. Christian European civilization is on the skids. The questions are why and what, if anything, are you going to do to arrest the slide?
It’s just not because of a Jewish conspiracy.
And Hitler isn’t the answer.
The cause of western degeneracy is the enlightenment. LIfe isn’t rational. We’ve overlaid everything with a false context. We need a return to respect for our Judeo-Christian foundation.
Katzenjammer is correct. The Enlightenment simply stole credit for things that had been acheived previously by Christian society. The child of the Enlightenment is Thermidor, and its symbol should be the guillotine.
I doubt whether the right-wing Israeli government views the nation of Israel as being “Judaeo-Christian”. What Israel and the Muslim countries have in common is that they identify as being nations consisting of a majority population of one race and/or one ethnicity and/or one religion, etc., with little or no tolerance for minorities. Compare that with our enlightened Judaeo-Christian Western Liberal Democracies, with our open borders, multiculturalism, self-loathing, etc.
It’s always a surprise to read this style of ignorance in conjunction with closed minded adamant certainty.
“one race and/or one ethnicity and/or one religion, etc., with little or no tolerance for minorities.”
Israel has about as many ethnicities and shades and attitudeas towards religion as Australia, and its minorites are greater proportion than most countries in the world, taking part in all layers, levels and types of enterprises and enjoying full citizenship rights.
The verifiable facts, as research will show, indicate that a majority of Arabs with Israeli citizenship are not all that happy with the status quo, and identify as being Palestinian. Their dissatisfaction obviously begins with the history of how they came to be citizens or permanent residents of Israel, and extends to the reality of Israel being a Jewish state, with a Jewish symbol being the national flag. Unlike Jews, Palestinian Arabs are denied the “right of return”, meaning that their relatives in the West Bank, Gaza, the many refugee camps in surrounding countries as well as within the general Palestinian diaspora further abroad are not allowed to join them as a family reunion. Jews throughout the world have the right, under Israeli law, to come and become citizens of Israel, and begin the process of “chain-migration”, even though they may have no verifiable historic links to Palestine or the ancient Hebrew people who once lived there.
It can be assumed that Arab Israelis of Palestinian identity do not feel any positive resonance towards the National Holocaust Memorial, given that the event in question set in train the actions which culminated in al Nakba! Would Israel allow the construction of a National al Nakba Memorial, given the alleged equality among citizens?
Druze, Bedouin and Christian Arabs within Israel may however, hold different opinions regarding Israeli citizenship.
The links below address the subject matter of this comment, probably as well as any other source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_citizens_of_Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel#:~:text=Arabs%20are%20the%20largest%20ethnic,and%20with%20varying%20social%20identities.
‘ Judaism has more in common with Islam than Christianity’
Congratulations on typing the most clownish sentence of 2023.
Thank you! It is indeed an honour to accept such a prestigious
accolade!
Good article, but to convince others who are unfamiliar with the territory, it needs exact quotations from the Koran and Hadiths to support its assertions.
Stephen, I usually put quotes from the Koran. I assume Quadrant readers would be familiar with a lot of them. Already had too many words for an online piece. I cited some Koranic extracts in the article I referenced. To wit:
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2017/12/reformist-pipedreams-islamic-reality-muslim-accountability/
Well said, Peter. I agree 100%.
I think there are far more people in the West that see the dangers of Islam than you might realise. As indicated my lbloveday earlier comment, those who try to speak out are promptly cancelled by our complicit media, and of course we always have hate speech laws hanging over our heads. When people do oppose Islam it is couched in culturaly neutral terms. Two examples:
Instead of saying “I don’t want a Mosque in my neighbourhood because it will bring with it unassimulatable and unwanted Islamic culture”; they say “I don’t want a Mosque in my neighbourhood because of parking issues”.
Instead of saying “I want immigration slashed because the people they are bringing in, particularly the Muslims, are destroying our culture and way of life”; they say “I want immigration slashed because of the housing and conjextion problems”.
While The Australian regularly reject comments such as mine above, look at what they accept:
.
The response of Israel is not equal to the response of Israel.
.
Verbatim, accepted by the moderator!
Check out Tim Dieppe
https://christianconcern.com/resource/is-islam-a-religion-of-peace/
https://www.waterstones.com/book/questions-to-ask-your-muslim-friends/beth-peltola/tim-dieppe/9781999584283
On one side is Judeo-Christian civilisation, fashioned through faith in the one true God whose son Jesus Christ set enlightened new ground rules for treating each other decently. And it has borne much fruit.
And not all of that fruit is good. The Crusades and Spanish Inquisition being historical examples and their modern equivalents. radical Christian groups such as The Army Of God who claim responsibility for the death of doctors and receptionists at abortion clinics. The Ku Klux Klan need no introduction. joseph Kony’s Ugandan Lords Liberation Army that kidnapped and killed thousands in the name of establishing a Christianist equivalent of Islamic Shariah Law. The Indian National Liberation Front of Tripurna killing, kidnapping and torturing Hindus that refuse to convert to their fundamentalist Protestantism. The Croatian Ustase with their catholic backed forced conversions and executions. Australian Christian Denis Michael Rohan who tried to burn down Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969.
Give everyone a break Michael. Nothing is stainless on this earth. Christianity has been an enormous force for good. Has produced a peerless civilisation. Not all “professing Christians” have been good. What a surprise!
Oh get real. The Crusades were a defensive response to constant Islamic aggression. The Inquisition was a response to an infestation of enemies in the liberated peninsula. The KKK was recreated by *hollywood*. An abortionist kills others for their personal convenience, so has no ground to stand on if someone else follows their rules. The claims of Indian nationalists of Christians using forced conversion have been repeatedly refuted – while they themselves seek to chase every non-Indian religion out of the subcontinent. Kony has no clue what Christianity *is*, et etc.
A woman-power decadent liberal society which encourages the supremacy of the individual and his desires over all tradition turns young women against their families, especially their fathers. These young women rear few children with little religion and such children will be the perfect, atomised, malleable thought-slaves. The only good thing about this is a small reduction in the rate of increase of Muslims in the post-Christian economic zone of Oz. Unfortunately this pattern has already played out amongst the European population here and elsewhere in the Rainbow Empire. It is the eradication of this population which appears to be desired with effectively inexhaustible reservoirs of Muslim and other non-European immigrants useful adjuncts to this end.
Islamic beliefs in Australia
https://islamicbeliefsinaustralia.wordpress.com/
I am glad you have started this conversation Peter, as we do have to decide whether we are to be gradually overcome by an alien culture or to insist that our Judeo-Christian culture will survive and prevail. It should be apparent by now to all who care that Islamists intend to take over the West mainly by force of numbers. Stopping all Muslim immigration is essential to saving our culture but it will be a long and hard battle with considerable resistance from the left but also from ‘bleeding hearts’ on the conservative side. Europe is gradually waking up to the problem and Australia must do so very soon.
Japan has very few Muslim residents, and those they have are quickly taught that their culture is not tolerated in Japan.
.
https://twitter.com/ajaychauhan41/status/1732320250178441668
“Containment is the only feasible strategy. Part of that is to severely restrict, if not ban, Muslim immigration to the West.” Well said Peter Smith. But I would like to add the following.
.
Because it is against the law to threaten to kill people in free Democratic countries in the West, then the authorities should monitor all mosques in Australia, and remove all the imams, mullahs and muftis who are breaking the law by brainwashing, indoctrinating and instructing all the Muslims in their mosques (5 times on a Friday) to follow the vile doctrine of Islam which demands death to all infidels/ kaffirs/ Jews/ Christians.
.
Islamists follow the doctrine of Islam which is found in the Koran, the Sira (the biography of Mohammed) and the Hadith (the traditions of Mohammed). The aim of Islam is to enforce world-wide sharia Islamic law; death to all kaffirs/infidels; and global formation of a violent, jihadi, Islamic caliphate.
.
Time to remove these guilty imams, mullahs and muftis by sending them all to Islamic countries, marked NEVER TO BE RETURNED! It is the POLITICAL Islam which must be stopped in Australia because it is the home-grown terrorists who are the most dangerous.
Thank you for your last two insightful articles. The issues with Islam go back to the seventh century, when an army of Franks defeated the advancing Islamic hordes at Tours/ Poitiers. The leader of these battles was Charles Martel , at this particular battle the Arab army/ Moslem ( mostly mounted ) failed to break the Frankish infantry. These battles must be considered pivotal in stopping the advance of Islam into Gaul and Germania.
Ths was only 100 years after the death of Muhammad, and the victories of the West was cemented by Martel,s grandson Charlemagne with the establishment of the holy Roman empire.
Now however the Moslem Hordes are imbedded in many western countries and the West has been weakened by numerous wars over the last hundred years, the days and years ahead look dark in this great religious battle.
Thank you for this reminder. And before the Hammer struck in 732 AD there had been a century of Christian lands across the west, south and east of the Mediterranean falling before the Arabs. Spain and Outre Mer aside, most were finally reconquered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, only to be given away due to a fatal failure of self-belief engendered by international liberalism. The only little bit of that region which is not in Muslim hands today is Israel, once long ago the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
I omitted explanation of the video – it’s in Japanese.
.
Japanese authorities apprehended a Somali Muslim who had molested girls. The Japanese police made the video viral as a warning to refugees who thought of committing such a crime in the future.
Islam is the single worst idea any one has ever had. So if you were allowed to go back in time only once and shoot one person. Would it be Hitler or Mohamad? Or someone else or no one?